Operation Rolling Thunder

Operation Rolling Thunder was a sustained US bombing campaign over North Vietnam which was carried out from 2 March 1965 to 2 November 1968 during the Vietnam War.

On 10 February 1965, 23 Americans were killed by the Viet Cong in the 1965 Qui Nhon hotel bombing, leading to US president Lyndon B. Johnson calling for further retaliatory airstrikes against North Vietnam. The escalation of the US role in the Vietnam War anxiety around the world. France called for an end to all foreign involvement in Vietnam, while British Prime Minister Harold Wilson called for restraint. Many leading Democrats in the United States agreed, but refused to publicly speak out against the escalation - even Vice President Hubert Humphrey's memorandum, which warned of the Vietnam War's undercutting of the Great Society and the war's potential to damage the US' overseas reputation and worsen relations with the Soviet Union, was ignored.

On 2 March 1965, President Johnson authorized a systematic bombing campaign against targets in North Vietnam. It was meant to be a mounting crescendo of air raids aiming to bolster morale in the South to and destroy morale in the North, and, as the US would ratchet up the bombing campaign, they expected that the North Vietnamese would ultimately be forced to pause its operations in South Vietnam and enter into negotiations with the US government. However, the North Vietnamese simply responded to the airstrikes with anti-aircraft fire and refused to give up. Johnson kept his change of strategy secret, as he had widened the war by replacing joint retaliatory action with systematic bombing. Not long after, General William Westmoreland asked President Johnson for 3,500 troops to help protect the Da Nang Airbase, and, despite Maxwell D. Taylor's opposition to the deployment of ground troops, Johnson decided to send in ground troops later in March to help the South Vietnamese.

The North Vietnamese government received military aid and assistance from the Soviet Union, China, and Nroth Korea, which supplied the North Vietnamese with anti-aircraft equipment, ammunition, supplies, tanks, weapons, and even experienced pilots. The USA was unable to boost Southern morale, persuade North Vietnam to cease support for the Viet Cong, or destroy North Vietnam's infrastructure, and the airstrikes were called off in 1968 after they proved to be unsuccessful.